


Come Find Me

by anomieow



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Bad Crozier, Bondage, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Topson, beechey island
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:20:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26801287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomieow/pseuds/anomieow
Summary: Even as a child, Thomas Jopson appreciated neatness, symmetry. He recalls once walking a perfectly straight path along the edge of a young orchard and observing with deep satisfaction how the saplings were seededjustequidistant and so grew like so many arrows shot perpendicular to the earth. And as he walked—as his perspective shifted—the sun between the trunks made a smooth shuttling of light, rows then slats then rows again. It was as though the only hand nature had in it was the incorruptible hand of geometry.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Jopson, Henry Collins/Harry D. S. Goodsir, Thomas Jopson/Henry Collins
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Come Find Me

Even as a child, Thomas Jopson appreciated neatness, symmetry. He recalls once walking a perfectly straight path along the edge of a young orchard and observing with deep satisfaction how the saplings were seeded _just_ equidistant and so grew like so many arrows shot perpendicular to the earth. And as he walked—as his perspective shifted—the sun between the trunks made a smooth shuttling of light, rows then slats then rows again. It was as though the only hand nature had in it was the incorruptible hand of geometry. Age gnarls that, the crawl of seasons dims it: but in some black loam at the hind of his brain those white trees still grow in an elegant, impeccable grid.

He was older before he realized that symmetry at its purest is constituted not of matter but of tension, of opposition. His wrists were tied behind his back and it was, he determined, the inclination of his arms to spread outward against the rope that supplied resistance. Not the bindings, but the force they bound. And so that force rolled in on itself, twining his shoulders and spine in a loose, numinous pain. He often had such thoughts: little blurts of bright things; flashes in the dark like lightning cosseted in cloud. He was not _an intellectual_ , not in the way great men are, but he understood things on a level beneath language. It was enough for his neighbor’s visiting uncle—a tow-headed, stout professor in his early thirties with eyes the oily brown of dried tobacco leaves—to take a special interest. _It’s not just because you are lovely but because you are exceedingly clever_ , he’d said; _you see through to the machinations of processes, to their fundamental essences._

Of course, such praise rang hollow when ropes of the man’s jism were cooling on Jopson’s cheekbone and lip, his brow. Then he’d call him _piggy_ or say he was his _little slut_ , neither of which pleased Jopson. But he endured it for the coarse cord around his wrists. That was a private sublimity, one in which the professor had little place. It would be years before he realized the man had only used the rope in case his quarry should change his mind. And he’d not deserved access to so divine a thing as that—the power to feed a man’s life force back to him disguised as burning or helplessness, depending on the day and circumstance, the security of the knot. 

This is what he’s thinking of, though obliquely (for it conjures in him a pulsing, difficult tenderness in him to think directly of the man, like fingering the coppery slack socket of a lost tooth) as he watches Henry Collins, second master, pick apart the rigging knots to lower the sails for winter. Now, there’s a man who knows his way around rope, his callused hands deft as he grips and tugs. Jopson appreciates the vital breadth of him, the dark corona of coarse hair, that dazzling sudden grin when he turns and sees he’s being observed. Jopson nods in greeting, permits himself the bare start of a smile.

“Look good, you reckon?” Collins asks, swinging himself down off the mast, rope hooked in a heavy sailor’s coil around his arm.

“I beg your pardon?” His tone is tepid—he finds such direct come-ons distasteful.

“The storage coils.” He stands with his arms on his hips, his grin not faltering. “Word is you’re a dab hand at rigging yourself.”

Jopson is hot with embarrassment. He nods stiffly, reaching for the rope on Collins’ arm. He fingers the double hitch: sturdy, symmetrical. “Where are you taking this?” 

“Supply tent. Might need it around camp. Never know what’ll need lashing down, aye?” 

Jopson nods again, has nothing to say. He’s deliberately made himself known as an amiable but taciturn man—no rapid patter. Now behind his soft, inscrutable smile—the mouth slightly quirked, dimples deepened beneath a calm gaze, head bowed slightly—he tries to figure out if the other man is implying anything. Casting out a line. But Collins saves him the trouble, casting a pleased, lazy gaze down the length of him and back up again.

“Be seeing you,” he says, and walks past him, the coiled length of rope bouncing against his sturdy hip. 

———

Henry Collins’ll go any which way. He doesn’t care. He’s all body, all impulse. Left to idle, he curls in on himself like burning paper. He’ll just as gladly direct the bullish thrust of his will toward work as he will pleasure, whichever’s available at the moment. Jopson might be both. There’s a funny kind of intensity about him, like behind that bland, inscrutable half-smile of his a sort of surprise. Bad? Good? And how’s he keep himself so neat? He seems the type to have someone tongue the dirt off him til he shines. Crozier, perhaps. Now, there’s a thought. 

Alone in the tent he shares with Goodsir and his work done for the moment, he figures he’s got time to toss one off. Something about Jopson’s got him smoldering like a banked flame: something about—he’d lick him clean all right, suck the shale dust from his fingers. The sweat from the inside of his thighs. Working himself loose from his trousers and stroking himself to hardness, he imagines kneeling before Jopson, kissing and sucking at his thighs, his belly. His hand in Collins’ hair as he noses, snuffles in the smell of him, like a dog. And then he’d be made to beg for the privilege of tasting him. There’s power in Jopson, an innate, and rigidly contained authority in him: that’s what it is. He’s the kind to get his prick and his pride mixed up, but lucky for him Collins has no such scruples. He just prefers a zestful fond fucking. A little rough, a little joyous: Thomas Blanky had been down for that a handful of times but not lately, and, possessing the libido of a tomcat, Collins has been crawling out of his skin. 

And anyway, Jopson would make a good master. Just, competent. To see those light eyes go soft and deep and indulgent—who wouldn’t prostrate himself for that? Collins knew a man once in London who spun dirty tales of walking a lad about on a leash, and the thought now—being at the slavering end of Jopson’s lead—touches a want in him pained and pulsing. Would he be made to pant like a dog, open-mouthed? Swatted if he did wrong? He spends so quick and hard at this thought it feels wrung out of him, done to him, and afterwards he feels no real relief. But just in time: he hears Goodsir’s scuffing step on the shale and just has time to wipe himself off, put himself away. 

Not that the good doctor would notice a damned thing. He comes in hunched over the open book in his hand, feels his way to the tent’s one chair with scarcely a glance over the transparent brim of his spectacles, and sits down. Maybe it’s his vulnerable and irritated state, or maybe it’s the fact that one of his first serious lovers was a petite, nebbish medical student, but he finds Goodsir’s presence just now an unbearable intrusion. Funny, to want to be alone: he never wants to be alone. In dreams he’s alone and the terror of it sucks the air from his lungs. But he must be at least friendly.

“Hello, doctor.”

“Mister,” he corrects him reflexively, a pained look crossing his face as his eyes flick up for the merest fraction of a moment. “Not doctor.”

“All right, _Mister._ I was thinking of making a circuit round the camp. Seeing what else needs done.”

Goodsir lays the book on his lap and gazes up at Collins.

“Are you asking my permission, Mr. Collins?”

“Jesus, then. Goodbye.” 

“I apologize, I didn’t intend—“  
But Collins has already left, stumping in an unjustified rage (he knows it’s unjustified, as does Goodsir, who’s nevertheless stung mightily) in the direction of the ship. He’ll work more. Work his hands to the bone—til he can’t see straight. That’s the only way through it. 

———

Goodsir had been warned about onanism, his older brother pontificating on its enervating evils as though he himself hadn’t been caught in the shed with a lock of Jenny Smythe’s hair in one fist and his own pink, crooked tool in the other. The lecture was unnecessary anyway: Goodsir seldom took himself in hand, not out of moral rectitude but because his need of it was mild and infrequent. Yet when his equilibrium was disturbed sufficiently that he found himself insistently erect, it was not the fairer sex he thought of. And so, while he deemed the urge itself to be quite natural, his own desires were distasteful, impractical. Unless presented with specific provocation, he disregarded them. 

But if anything constituted a provocation, it was this: his tent mate—an ideal specimen of rugged masculinity—brazenly pleasuring himself one their shared tent in the middle of the day. Most irregular! Necessitated, perhaps, by an uncommon excess of virility—this supposition, he is alarmed to note, stirs a molten flutter in his own gut and a most vivid projection in his mind’s eye of the tall, heavy-shouldered sailor humped over, leaning perhaps with one hand against the tent post, working the length of that fat pink thing he’d glimpsed once or twice in undressing. Perhaps chewing his lip, perhaps letting his eyes fall shut. A lick of dark hair hanging down over his brow, perhaps. Cheeks flushed? Probably. He’s panting in there, each breath more clipped, harsher, than the last. 

It’s only when Goodsir absentmindedly reaches toward his own prick and finds it visibly erect that he pushes up onto tiptoes with his hands clasped at his waist and tiptoes back about ten yards. On tiptoes, now that he thinks of it, is how he’d approached, as was his way of walking—people thought him queer, he knew—when excited, for he and Fitzjames had found a new kind of crab—a quick and aggressive species, with a pearlescent, marbled carapace. Now, having backed silently up from the tent, he fishes his Linnaeus from his pack and hastily arranges the canvas sack so it is slung across his... his—that is, the terribly visible evidence of his having heard what he was not meant to hear. He scuffles noisily up to the flap of the tent, determined to appear so absorbed in his reading that he could not have possibly noticed anything out of the ordinary. 

———

The mere suggestion of defiling the captain’s table would be unthinkable any other day but today is not any other day. For Jopson is angry with Captain Crozier—or rather, he’s stung, which a heart as pragmatic as his sums as anger in the end. And anger is nothing; anger one folds and puts away neatly like summer’s clothes in late September. But this particular hurt is a grievous one: last night the captain had hurled his whiskey glass to the floor in an inebriated rage and spat insults at him as he cleaned it up. He called him _an obsequious little cocksucker_ and said he was a _nasty wee bugger of a ma’s boy_. Had he the stones to rasp such invective into Jopson’s ear rather than hurl it down at him from the distance of five stiff whiskeys, it might be his thighs either side of Jopson’s waist, his tongue working loose little soft whimpers from the juncture of jaw and throat. 

Not that Collins is meant as a substitute. Crozier is always a possibility in the way it is always theoretically possible to jump over the side of the ship. If anything, Collins is a much saner choice. For one thing, he’s already managed an impressive cockstand, which in itself places him leagues ahead of the captain. The captain’s he’s only ever seen dormant, a waxen little slug nearly hidden in its nest of curls. Jopson, in his heart of hearts, loves Crozier; he loves him with an affection so vast and ferocious that it tips over into a kind of nervy revulsion, like ice against the back of one’s teeth. And he’s grateful for it. Without that, whatever would prevent him from surrendering himself wholly? He must always be straightening something, putting something else aright— _a regular mother hen you are,_ he scolds himself. 

Collins is good with his mouth, though rough, and his hands seem everywhere at once. There’s an unguarded joy to him, some animal energy that begs harnessing. He makes an unceremonious grab for Jopson’s cock and Jopson dances back.

“None of that, sir,” Jopson grins softly, seizing Collins by the wrist.

“Tease,” Collins grins, reaching with his other hand. 

That wrist, too, Jopson grabs, leaning in to shoulder Collins down onto his elbows, his hands pinned at his sides beneath Jopson’s spread palms. His lean belly is pressed against Collins’ stones, the underside of his prodigious cockstand. “Now I’ve got you where we both want you, sir.”

Collins’ eyes dance. “You needn’t call _me_ sir,” he murmurs, still grinning. 

“No? What shall I call you?”

“Whatever you’d like, as long as I can get my tongue in that tight little tail of yours.”

Jopson’s breath catches in his throat but his gaze is calm, assessing. Then he stands upright as, distantly, bells ring. “We’ve not the time. But I take a man at his word. And you may call me sir.” 

Collins grins, big and giddy. “My word, sir, is my worth. You just come find me.”


End file.
